Reflections of a PhD'er

Menu

When Sandi Toksvig complimented me on my German

I was on TV…again! Last year I went on the TV quiz show Fifteen to One, presented by the marvellous Sandi Toksvig (read all about it here, if you must :). Not long after, they asked me if I wanted another go – hell, yes! I love Fifteen to One! And so I set off again to the Glasgow studios, ready for another day of quiz-filled fun and banter in the green room. My make-up artist also does Amy MacDonald’s make-up, and when I was done, I looked… sadly, nothing like Amy MacDonald, but like same old me with half a ton of make-up on my face. Ah well. Then, bizarrely, on my show one question after another was German-related! Questions come up randomly, so it was all one weird coincidence, and, unfortunately, I didn’t get any of them (I mean I wasn’t asked the question, not that I didn’t know the answer :).

Eins: What name, derived from the German word for bone, is usually given to any of the inter-phalangeal joints of the hand?

Zwei: In 1985, at the age of 17, which Tennis player became the first unseeded player in the open era, and also the first German to win the men’s single title at Wimbledon?

Drei: The Head of the German government is known as the Bundeskanzler, or Bundeskanzlerin. This term is usually translated into English as what?

After a while Sandi stopped and turned to me:

“I don’t know if it’s you being on the programme Heike, but this is about the fourth time I’ve said the word German on the show today“. Then – there was another!

Vier: What name that translates from German as ‘Foam of the Sea’ is given to the soft, white, clay-like mineral, sometimes known as sepialite, that has been used since the 18th century to make smoking pipes, often carved into elaborate shapes?*

Cut – everyone in stitches!

Then I had a question about the phrase in The Shining that Jack Nicholson types out on his typewriter over and over again.

“Incidentally”, Sandi reads off her all-knowing iPad type thing, ”this has been replaced in the German version with the saying what you can do today, don’t wait until tomorrow to do. Would you know what that is?”

Silence. All eyes on me. All I can think of is the mickey-take version which says exactly the opposite: If you can do it today – wait until tomorrow to do it. Then it comes to me:

Aww! Now whilst in the past I’ve occasionally received nice comments about my English, never in my life have I been congratulated on my German before. But there’s a first for everything and I’m beingcomplimented on my German by Sandi Toksvig(unfortunately that bit was lost on the cutting floor – maybe they thought they already had enough German for one show!).Nothing could top this experience, and from that moment on everything else turned into a bit of a blur. Apparently I went on to win the show, but if I didn’t have a trophy sitting on my mantlepiece, I really couldn’t be too sure about that.

“It was kind of your show, really,” says Sandi to me at the end.

“They should call this one The German Show!”

Indeed! And Sandi can’t know what happened earlier, when my fellow contestants and I lined up in the corridor ready to walk on set. One of us 15 hopefuls remarked that

“This is a bit like lining up to be shot”, and then added,

“Where’s the German?!”

“Don’t know what I should have to do with that”, I grumbled.

And that should have been the end of that one. But the reply came:

“Because you would be the one shooting us!”

Before I could say anything back, it was lights, camera, action. I tried to concentrate on the show, which was a surreal enough experience even without me trying to process the fact that someone had just said a stupid, unfunny and, yes, offensive thing to me. In my previous, very happy almost three decades of living in the UK, nothing like this had ever happened to me, which means so much more than this one-off questionable incident – but, still… And then, in the most bizarre turn of events, The German Show happened, and the person in question knocked out of the game quite early on. Everybody else was extremely lovely and fun, as was the all-over experience. And the rest – is history!